AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 CPU Review. Page 2

AMD has finally managed to release a CPU with 2.4GHz clock frequency. Due to the new CG core revision we are glad to welcome Athlon 64 FX-53. Read all you wanted to know about the newcomer: a lot of benchmarks, overclocking results and a few exciting tests of the Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems.

I have to say however that AMD had to work real hard to conquer 2.4GHz frequency. In order to produce CPUs with these advanced characteristics they had to develop a new Athlon 64 die revision, which would be more scalable in terms of frequency. This revision is marked as CG and is recognized as such in Athlon 64 FX-53 by identification utilities.

Besides better frequency scalability, the new CG revision should also boast a few other innovations. Among them are better compatibility with various memory modules and more flexible Cool’n’Quiet technology. However, we will not see these improvements in the new Athlon 64 FX-53. Since this CPU is designed for Socket 940 mainboards, Cool’n’Quiet technology is disabled and the memory controller works just the same way as that of the Athlon FX-51 requiring registered memory modules. In order to really feel the advantages of the new die revision, we will have to wait for the Socket 754 Athlon 64 3700+ processor scheduled for April. Moreover, the transition of Athlon 64 FX-53 to CG core revision doesn’t change anything in the thermal and electric characteristics of the CPU despite the increase core clock frequency.

In addition to what has just been said, I would only like to remind you that Athlon 64 FX-53 is the last desktop processor from AMD for Socket 940 form-factor. In May the entire Athlon 64 FX family will move to Socket 939 and will acquire faster HyperTransport bus with 1GHz frequency and a dual-channel memory controller, which will not demand registered memory modules. So Socket 940 will only be used by Opteron processor family intended for servers and workstations.

Overclocking

Since the major key feature of the new Athlon 64 FX-53 CG core revision is higher frequency potential, we thought it would be interesting to check how well this processor can overclock. As you remember, the CPUs based on the previous C0 die revision didn’t go beyond 2.4GHz with air cooling solutions involved. In other words, the new Athlon 64 FX-53 couldn’t be based on the old core revision. The new core should definitely show better absolute results during overclocking. The only question is how impressive these results will be. According to AMD’s current plans, the top core frequency for 0.13micron Athlon 64 processors is 2.4GHz. AMD is going to release faster Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX processor models with the prospective 90nm San Diego and Winchester cores. However, we haven’t yet tried the new CG core in practice. Maybe AMD’s pragmatic expectations will not prove true and the new CG core will be able to work at higher frequencies. All in all, an experiment is necessary.

Before we pass over to the results obtained during AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 overclocking, we have to stress that since AMD positions this CPU as an enthusiastic solution, it is free from all artificial limitations that could hinder successful overclocking. Unlike Athlon 64, the clock frequency multiplier of the new Athlon 64 FX has no upper limit. That is why those hardware enthusiasts who decide to invest in the new Athlon 64 FX get an opportunity to perform easy overclocking of their CPU without changing the working frequencies for the memory, HyperTransport, AGP or PCI.